Gregory De Feo[comments@thewritegallery.com]
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May had been walking as usual with some of her kin, near
daybreak and uneventfully long, till she told them, "I said I'll
not walk with you -- from the day you breach your vow in any
mention that I may use anything that is yours!" She ran for a
distant tree, breaking her search for nourishment in the great Irish
famine, thinking that her kin's eyes looked hard on what she had
spoken -- they had looked puzzled -- and seeing the red of the sky
that heralded the sun she was cursing for no lessening of its heat.
She shook her fist at it and declared, "Ay! And worst you've
been to other lands -- you ruined all their green! Ay! You rose and
told them they'd get no relief!"

While knocking on the tree, her hand that had gestured the
sun to finish its course motioned that it not rise, as she had
adjudged it guilty for a hollow tree with, "And it had a fine
sound before you spoiled under the bark what let it stick!"

There was calm when she thought that the bark over a
withered trunk made the tree seemly enough from the ground to
through its branches that she said it stood "for Ireland that
endures" Then to the sun again, "If God was indecisive
or insensitive while you wreaked, the words I spoke that
condemned you for your victims' sakes and in their stead stand for
Him!" There was not an idle instant; May's thoughts
juxtaposed English words it seemed she had translated from Celtic
ones, yet she heard the distant farewells of her kin and thought that
those who did not strike on the activity did not trespass. Her fist to
the sun, May turned her head and waved to these who, with the
rest, were going to mix politics with business, with worldliness she
had declined involving herself with, even when it had been
perfunctory, before her kin had honed it on their rough
deliberations. Past her shoulder, she saw that they had walked to
the end of the darker land beneath the less dark sky on which
appeared only their waving hands, then returned to the light that
had filled the sky as her fist became the hand that shaded her eyes.

May cursed the light with Gaelic that sounded like,
"Damay! To if-rain!" as it adjusted them slowly that she
squinted longer than she had ever past a return, and swore saying
that she could not see to don her shoe. She was not affirming what
those who had gone west for the day had told her had caused the
blight, and while blaming the sun's heat said, "It's you!"
and giggled till it became the wheezing laughter of an unclear
throat, her head barely nodding its opened mouth and narrowed
eyes. After some deep breathing, a composed May smirked
beneath the hand she used to shade her eyes; the fingers of the
other repeatedly pressed the bark that repeatedly squeaked the 'e-
ou's she was imitating to belittle the sun, which rays bounded over
the hand that could not keep her eyes in the unendurable light. May
placed her fists atop her head, crouched, and bowed.

May feared that the light would reveal her ordinary looks as it
had the worn parish saint statues she thought had looked as
ordinary; and though she said, "Ay, but the answers they give
me prove they pray as powerfully to God as I pray to them,"
she fretted recalling her "triumph of a veneer" of her
well-featured kin.

Although they had titled her with "Lady" at her
birth and had never hinted at the differences, she put her hand back
to push at them who had been long gone. There was not the least
chance for the first word of what one could have cleverly said
"that it was her own who she had snubbed" before there
was excessive pain when her palm had touched something, pain
that had felt like a blow from an unusual use of a bat as a weapon.
May was screaming and shaking her head, paused to look at the
sun without shielding her eyes and screamed again. Someone who
was calling "May!" with a woman's voice held May's
wrist. May shook her head to rid the sun's afterglow from her sight
and she heard her name when it vanished.

The woman had stood May, who faced a still dark west from
where something stung her eyes shut, and she stopped her ears at
a droned "May!" she felt spreading in her head. When
May opened her eyes, she saw as if blood was mixing with water
and nearly fainted, but the hand kept her. She straightened up and
brightened when she saw that the move made her as hungry as
whenever she had finished a day's work in the field, though she had
not distinguished the woman who faced her. The west had lit up,
but May saw the woman non-rendered, who could have been
clearly seen had a splendor that looked hardly contained in her
outline. The woman said something that ended, ". . .
Jesus." That the name sounded well spoken it must not have
been May -- she was thinking in brogue, arranging her reply on
translating many Gaelic words for what an English phrase she
knew could have done, but the woman, when May clearly declared,
"There they be: God's words spoken by me to whom He had
given His tongue!" May saw that the blurry red remained and
thought the woman, who was silent and silhouetted, spoke
contemptuously so that May settled on her as one who had arrived
from the long gone clan.

The woman said, "Why don't you---"

"---Ask!" May shouted, the latest burst of what
had swelled again since her clan had ventured a talk with her, and
screamed for the pain she felt increasing with what she saw was
the action of the woman's countenance, light that was washing the
blurry red, but neither existed.

If you thought that the source of May's air was her mood that
was like bath water your toe must sample repeatedly, you felt her
pain subside and saw the red become an opaque swirl, but heard
her ideas as if they were disjoined. That way you timidly entered the
tub, though you had cooled it with the conviction that what May told
the woman was her resolve to take care, if not show deference, for
no painful recurrences: "Lest you been praying my words to
saints who answer you with light that cause me pain -- I have
erred." By entering blindly, though, one had learned that with
what May had said, that the greater light had been the powerful
reply of the saints to a powerful petitioner as herself, she had tried
accommodating the woman, and that she had purposefully added
the concluding words that had checked the returning greater light
for her.

From now on, the bold commanded what they whose fear
had measured them unfit could not -- all that May knew. Their fear
had placed them outside her, as if to the temple's outer court,
where those who had distinguished themselves diffident in other
matters ought to trample them unrecognizable, this unmistaken
conclusion from a heavenly splendor one had clearly seen, and no
splendor allows what can't even be its stay. May feared again,
declaring to the woman, "You be not a Slone!" where
fear had caused her another right turn of mind, seeing the woman
had said or done nothing, that May ought to stay settled on her;
instead, she had the peace that comes from the inability to
conclude about anyone who it is not possible to consider anything.

May's rational state that resulted from her decisions
engendered one's amity as her guest and though the woman was
talking, a guest is obliged to be concerned with only what the host
prompts, at least ignoring the outsider to uphold agreement if not
following the host, who closed her ears. The woman's countenance
increased with a developing pain. Though a guest need not remain
with a host now, the one who befriends her with it, not stepping out
to say that, really, it was not as bad as she felt it, but enduring it
even to death, clinches rising over the status of a mere guest. From
there are seen all the timid in this matter looking at the one who
sees that if anywhere is highest is confident for another win to
achieve the tier: an ability to see with everyone at once and not only
with a May, and not what the timid see if they were placed there.

The woman was cajoling May, whose fall in a seizure
happened when she heard persuasion as the coup de main --
suddenly, that the timid can't escape and someone says that the
brave one who writhes with her longer and longer is taking from the
next win and shaking off the trace shivers in the highest seat.
Whatever May had said, that the woman's aura had developed pain
with heat, she had been considerate for her guest. For her best
hospitality, one will confess to having a great ambition, and slyly
promise her a cut to feel her agony in what she tricks from the
woman, but May was exhausted that it must have been one's own
ears heard her clan approaching from where she had seen them
wave to her. The woman was gone and without her one saw the
western sky was as red as it had been at today's sunrise. All May
had was what they ran to give her; they must have seen her down
-- but whatever they give is to when she becomes conscious, and
doubtless runs off again to give one another go for the top.

In "The Sunrise for Lady May," the ambition of the
narrator becomes apparent -- what excludes any humane
consideration of an actual person and any exploration to confirm
the identity of a mysterious presence.